He was a model student, just like the rest of his classmates. Mohammed was a student at one of the institutes for gifted youth in Eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border. The other morning, together with his classmates, Mohammed was taken from his classroom: brought to the street, he was forced to join in a pro-regime march in the city of Deir ez Zor, a hotbed of dissent. Mohammed dared to give voice to those who like him did not want to go and protest against the decision of the Arab League to suspend Syria for the brutality of Assad’s repression of dissenters. He dared to ask to simply go home. The response was a bullet in his chest, in front of his classmates as they witnessed in
shock.

The teen had fallen to the ground, but Assad’s military security forces continued to shoot: first they kicked him and clubbed him with sticks and then they ended by firing one more shot into his side. “Make sure he is dead,” was the order given by the commander of the Military Security Forces, in the account given of the incident before the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO with a London base that has access to a large number of voluntary informers who life in Syria.

Mohammed Abdul Salam Al Mlaessa was only 14 years old. How he was beaten and brought to such pitiful condition at the end of this brutal execution can be seen in the videos on You Tube (it is not possible to verify the authenticity, Western journalists are forbidden to report by the regime): a bullet hole in the left side, his face plummeted and in a pool of blood. An “exemplary” lesson for the other youth present.

That Damascus is afraid of students was something that was clear from the start: at the beginning of the protests, last March, repression against a group of youth that had made anti-Assad graffiti on the walls of their school. “From primary school to high school, the youth of Syria are in the front line in the protests,” Mousab Azzawi, from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights states. “No regime can resist when students protest and for this reason, they fear them, they kill them, they take them as hostages. And they make their families hear their voice over the phone as they are torturing them.”

The funeral of Mohammed was attended by at least 45 thousand people, according to estimates. “To disperse the crowd, agents used electrical sticks that provoked temporary paralysis,” Azzawi states. At the ceremony there was an evening sit-in with 8 thousand youths in what has been renamed “Liberty Square”. The gathering was dispersed by firing from the security forces: here there were two of the day’s thirty victims, the majority of which in the city of Homs, the capital of the protesters, where the deserters have taken refuge. But also in the streets of Hama, Deraa, Idleb, people continue to be killed. The activists report that yesterday forty protesters had been killed by soldiers near the Jordan border.

The repression has not stopped, despite the agreement made by Damascus on 2 November to follow the Arab League’s peace plan which calls for the end of the violence and the withdrawal of the tanks from the cities. And after the assaults on the Embassies of the Arab countries that had announced the suspension of Syria from the pan-Arab organisation, the regime has used the iron fist to fill the squares with pro-Assad marches and demonstrations. The case of Mohammed is not an isolated one. Similar incidents have been reported in other parts of the country. Azzawi states: “This same Sunday at Hama, the security forces shot against a group of students who had refused to participate in a loyalist march: five of them never again opened their eyes.”

STATEMENT FROM THE SYRIAN OBSERVATORY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, Sunday, 13 November 2011 19:41

On November the
13th , 2011, 09.15 local time in Dir Zour, the elements of military security took out the students of the pioneer students school in the city by force to the street and compelled them to participate in a march organized by Syrian security forces to condemn the decisions of Arab League concerning the suspending of Syrian membership in the League.When first-graders of high school refused to participate in the march, and asked to be allowed to go back homes, security forces arrested the student Mohamed Abdul Salam Al-Mlaessa (14 years) who spoke on behalf of his classmates who do not want to participate in the march supporting Syrian Regime, and shot him directly in his chest just under the right wishbone in front of his friends. Then, they started beating him with batons while he bleeds in front of all students crowded for few minutes. When they were not sure about his Death, several minutes after the first shot in his chest, and the awful beating he was subjected to, the commander of the present elements of military security recommended the elements to shoot him again to ensure that he dies (this is literally what the commander said), and this is exactly what happened through the second shot in the flank of the child Mohamed Abdul Salam Al-Mlaessa, which led to his death.Syrian Observatory for Human Rights calls on all Arab and International organizations concerned with protecting civilians and child rights, to urgently intervene to protect civilians in Syria and refer all those responsible for committing such crimes against civilians in Syria to International Criminal Court to consider what might be a typical example of the crimes against humanity that are taking place daily in Syria.To see the documenting videos, you can click on the links below:

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[…] Muhammad Issa, 16 years old from Dayr Az-Zawr. During the pro-Assad rally on 13/11/2011, which his school was made to attend, Muhammad started chanting “the people want the fall of the regime” and he was killed by security forces. … Teen killed for refusing to march for Assad […]